"We aren't all impervious to drink like you."

Dermott offered them a tight smile. "India does that to you-if it doesn't kill you…"

"Or make you a nabob."

"Among other things."

He spoke so low, most at the table couldn't hear him, but his tone was such that no one asked for clarification. And he was already walking toward the door anyway, tall and commanding even in his disheveled state.

He entered the foyer from the gaming room just as Isabella stepped through the drawing room door. Mercer offered him a blank gaze and without comment showed the young woman up the stairway to the main floor.

Transfixed, Dermott watched her ascent, the lady's beauty uncommonly rare. Pale-haired and rosy-cheeked with eyes the color of gentian, she had the look of a meadow sprite, particularly with her flowing damp tresses and wettish gown. She moved too with an ethereal lightness, her slender form seeming to flow up the stairs without effort on violet-slippered feet. He caught a scent of her fragrance as she passed, and the perfume drifted around him, evoking memories of cascading roses and summer nights.

He spoke Mercer's name as they reached the top of the staircase, but the majordomo didn't reply.

And then they were gone.

Chapter Two

ISABELLA WAS SHOWN into the presence of a middle-aged lady and left on the threshold of a sitting room softly lit by two torcheres.

"Do come in. I'm Mrs. Crocker." Molly Crocker gazed at the young woman in the doorway with a practiced eye-the bedraggled but expensive gown, her fine amethyst and pearl jewelry, the beauty of her face and form. And she wondered why a lady of fashion was being pursued in the night.

"Please accept my apologies… for intruding so precipitously," Isabella murmured as she moved forward. "But I saw your light outside-"